Well, we have been at Orange Beach Marina for a week now.  We were happy to see that “Hank” is still here

Hank on the bow

They have gotten smarter with keeping their Palm trees alive.  See how they cover them

Bagged Palm Trees

Hopefully it helps.  The people around here lost quite a few trees last year when that freeze came thru.

We celebrated our first Sunday with Bloodies and a Mexican breakfast bake.  Yum!

Bloodies

So we decided now that we are settled we better go fetch the van before the dealership we left it at auctions it off.  So we rented another car from Enterprise (thanks Pat) and we left on the 23^rd, Friday, to go back up to Corinth to pick up our van.  It was a cold and rainy day.  The car we rented a cute little Chevy Sonic.  It only took about 10 gallons to fill.  Lots of extras, pretty comfortable and besides that, it was cheap :).

I called the dealership before we left the marina to let them know we were coming.  No sweat, the van is all ready.  So we drive all day thru the rain and get to the dealership about 4:10.  They close at 5.  We go in to the cashier, tell them who we are and what we want.  The girl gathers our paperwork.  Now they also did do an oil change on the van.  We had finally called them after a week of not hearing anything and they said they were glad we called cause there was gas in the oil and they wanted to do an oil change.  The oil change costs money and the rest was going to be covered under warranty.  We gave them the OK for the oil change as we knew we needed one anyway.  So the girl hands us the paperwork for our oil change, in triplicate, has us sign here and there and takes our credit card.  So, I say, do you have any paperwork for the rest of the work they did on the van?  We’d like to keep it for our records.  Oh, she says, they did more work.  So we tell her about the coil replacement and the other part they had to replace.  She starts looking around any can’t find anything.  She calls in the Shop guy, we refresh his memory, he leaves and looks around.  He can’t find anything either so another lady looks it up on the computer, ahhh, here it is.  So the Shop guy goes and gets the print out.  I ask him, so, what was the other part?  He looks as the paperwork and with a blank expression on his face reads “replaced coil, no cure, PCM shorted internal, replaced and programmed PCM, test drove, OK”.  So what does that mean I ask him, he says they replaced the PCM, took it for a test drive and now it’s OK.  So you really don’t know what they did either do ya?  I just say OK and take the keys.  Then he has to find the car, Gary tells him roughly where it is and the guy goes off for it.  I jump in our cute little rental car

Gary and our cute little rental with the small gas tank

and wait for Gary to get in the van so we can find a hotel.  The van comes around and Gary gets in.  I can see him fiddling with the radio.  Oh oh, that’s not good.  He never listens to the radio.  I shut off the cute little rental and go see what the matter is.  Apparently the radio has “wait 30” on it.  What the heck?  They have only had the car for 2 weeks, nobody noticed this?  We get out of the van, and back into the service area we go to explain our situation.  The Shop guy looks confused, it’s 4:30 by now and there are 3 other people in his service area looking for help with their cars.  We’ll guess what people?  They are taking care of us first.  The Shop guy starts looking the error code up on his computer, then he goes and looks in the van, then he consults with a mechanic (I hope their only Dodge mechanic hasn’t gone home for the day cause I am not spending another day here)  They pull the van into a bay.  At 4:55 the van is all fixed!  It just needed the anti-theft code entered!  Whew!  That was a close one.

We are off to our nice hotel for a nice glass of wine 🙂

We wake the next morning to find out it has SNOWED!

Snow on the lamp post

Snow on the landscape

Let’s get the hell outta Dodge, there is snow here!  So off we go with our fixed fan and our cute little rental, back to Orange Beach for 4 months of fun in the sun.

BTW, for those of you that don’t know what a PCM is, my sister in law Googled it for us

1. A power-train control module, abbreviated PCM, is an automotive component, an electronic control unit (ECU), used on motor vehicles. It is generally a combined control unit, consisting of the engine control unit (ECU) and the transmission control unit.

Basically the “Brain” in the car.  Remember when we hit the deer in 2013 and the brain was hanging down and Gary bunged it up and covered it with baggies to keep it dry?  I guess we were lucky to make back to Aqua in December.  Thanks to all those little Angels that are watching over us 🙂